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Yup. Used to pull this shit with my friends in high school when we were into airsoft. One of them had a suit. He'd crouch in the middle of country road under a light post and when a car would come to slow down, he'd slowly start standing up. I like to think some people are still talking about it like the OP.

as kids, my brothers and I would set small rocks and animal bones and such in formations in the woods that we would explore just for that reason. "Hey some hunter is going to come across this and think it's devil worshippers! That's hilarious!"

Well there are many reasons that could attribute to this not happening more often. The first being that CCWs are not terribly terribly common. I have some friends that have them, but more that don't.

The other is that, at least from my experience (being from MN and gone through the courses twice), is you are trained that it is absolutely only used when you have no other choice. This also means that it is not possible to escape. The one exception where this changes is if you are acting to save someone else (even if you can escape, if someone else is being attacked and you fear for their life, then you are not obligated to escape).

Otherwise, the bottom line is, if you are able to avoid the conflict, you must do so. It's meant as a means of protecting your life or the life of another when you absolutely have no other choice.

Some states are different though. I don't know all of the specifics, but I believe if it is a "stand your ground" state, you are not obligated to escape/avoid conflict. I could be wrong though.

You have it right. It used to be the "duty to retreat," where you had to exhaust all options to deescalate before you resorted to deadly force. "stand your ground" removes that requirement--legally your first response can be deadly force.

For real though... I see a dude in a gilly dancing at me in the middle of fucking nowhere, you bet your sweet ass I'm high-tailing it out of there. I might be a coward, but at least I'll be an alive coward.

OPs description does sound pretty similar except for the featureless black face part. Ghillie suits usually have some sort of sheer fabric or mesh face screen that matches the camo of the rest of the suit or just a hood with an open face, intended to be worn with face camo, a balaclava, or what have you. If it was a hunter or airsoft player that OP ran into, it would make absolutely no sense for them to be wearing black anything with desert camo. That plus the weird dancing ritual makes it seem like the more plausible explanation is that someone was lying in wait, wearing a hot as fuck get-up, on this trail just to fuck with people, which is equally as creepy as any supernatural or cryptic explanation.

Some kid in my neighborhood apparently got a ghillie suite as a christmas present. I was playing fetch with my dog at the park and this kid and his friends run up. The kid of course wants to show off his costume so he runs up and then falls on the ground pretending to be dead leaves. I thought it was pretty funny but my dog was having none of it. Stupid ghillie suit scared him shitless and he ran full speed back to my front door 2 blocks away.

I'd like to point out that this doesn't actually make this not scary, this has the unique ability of just meaning it's a normal human killing you. If it goes that way, anyway. It's not the "oh, that was really a plane, everything is fine" sort of resolution.

Was out there alone, saw a hiker coming up to him and stood up to see why they were walking up to him. If you were in that position, and you realized they thought you were a monster and were frozen in terror, there's no way you could resist doing a spooking dance and watching them run for the hills.

I was in a ghille suit sitting on a fallen tree hunting and two girls came up to me with their dogs (shepherds) and stopped about 6 feet in front of me. They were talking amongst themselves and their dogs were frolicking about.

I stood up and politely asked them to move, as I was certain they saw me (they didn't). After all, it was a state hunting property during hunting season; only legitimate hunters are permitted.

Well, these two let out the biggest screams I ever did hear and all at once, the dogs noticed me and started barking like mad.. As for why the dogs didn't spot me before, everything (including me) is washed in odor neutralizer.

One said she thought I was the predator alien, appearing out of thin air like that.

Another time, a hiker walked right up to my tree stand before noticing me and shrieked like a little school girl. He might have let out a little piddle. His girlfriend just chuckled as the man continued to point at me repeatedly asking "Are you all right? Are you all right?" I think he was in shock or something.

The dancing is actually what made me think of it. My friend used to wear one to paintball and he had to move with his arms out so he wouldn't trip over the suit. Seeing him move at a distance could look like dancing.

Side note. One time in college my buddies and I were smoking Salvia. Great setting. A screened porch at night with candles setting the vibe. One of my buddies that never tried it took a massive hit. Then, out of sheer coincidence, his brother walked into the room in a full ghillie suit and sat next to him. I can't fathom the trip that guy had. Thats my wholesome unrelated ghillie suit story. Love you all

Kind of reminds me of the meaning behind the Black Sabbath song Iron Man:

The lyrics tell the story of a man who time travels into the future, and sees the apocalypse. In the process of returning to the present, he is turned into steel by a magnetic storm. He is rendered mute, unable verbally to warn people of his vision of impending destruction. His attempts to communicate are ignored and mocked. This causes Iron Man to become furious, and drives his revenge on mankind, causing the apocalypse seen in his vision[4], alluding to Joseph Stalin (whose name literally means "Man of Steel")[5].

I used to be a designated marksman in the army and we often performed training exercises in woods with a lot of hikers and dog owners taking a walk. One time me and my spotter were tasked with performing recon on a dirt road and record the people moving there. We were both in Ghillie suits and a camo-paint to make our faces as featureless as possible. (Here's an example of what it might look like)

We see someone walking their dog without a leash, and the dog must've picked up our scent, because it bolted towards us barking. It stops a few meters short and the owner stands next to it and goes "What is it? What do you see". I just could not not do something, so I sat up a little from our prone position and gesticulated the "shush" motion with my finger over my lips. The poor dog owner just picked up the little dog and ran like their life depended on it in the direction they just came from. That's probably one of my favourite memories from any exercise, and I'm sure you were his favourite memory!

I’ve done an exercise similar to yours. Not nearly as hardcore as you, but evasion and escape type deal. My team and I were holed up somewhere on the base in a group of trees. And this van pulls up and a family and their dog get out to play. Which is pretty weird since it was right next to a water treatment plan. But after a while they kinda just get to relaxing and we’re bored so we’re watching. And the dog is looking around, and just stares in our direction and runs towards us. The family watches and doesn’t seem to care. But the dog comes into our enclosed area and just cozies up with us for cuddles and pets for a good 30 minutes until the family came looking for him then the dog ran out and joined the family and they left.

I’ll always remember that dog. We’ll be his little secret that he discovered by himself.

This not only happens quite a bit to this specific dog but shenanigans and adventure are no novelty to this loveable pupper. On a daily basis our pupperino finds itself involved in some sort of high jinks or high stakes (steaks) situation. Whether it be proving to some bored soldiers that they are not as hidden as they think they are, or closing down the county's controversial fast food franchise, you can bet this dog is having a howl of a day.

Fuck that noise, I love snakes but when the venomous ones get too close my heart starts pounding. My little brother and I were digging a hole for fun at our ranch wen we were kids and I saw a baby rattle snake slithering inches behind him. I told him “don’t move there’s a snake behind you.” and the little shit jumped backwards, narrowly missing the snake and landing on the other side of it. I just swung my pick axe down and chopped it’s head off as fast as I could.

I read a story on reddit before where the guy as a teen would hike in the nearby forest and felt like he was being watched. He then acted on it and was surrounded by special forces he said and they talked about football.

SF guys are usually the friendliest and most down to earth guys I've met. They don't feel the need to swing their dicks around like regular grunts - so if the redditor met them it wouldn't surprise me if they chatted him/her up and were nice. If they were supposed to be hidden and were talking about football, chances are they weren't SF guys ;P

Your country maybe. If you stumble across a camoflaged man, smelling of piss and hiding in the bushes in Ireland, it's far more likely to be Father Murphy waiting for Sunday school to finish than it is Special Forces.

Haha, that would be something! My friend that went on to become an airborne ranger hade one exercise where they would just do heavy PT for pretty much an entire day, and in the evening they'd dig a hole large enough to stand in and then stare at a field and record what they saw. At 4 in the morning an officer would go out on the field, light a cig and then walk back. If you missed that, you failed. If you were caught sleeping by officers walking around you had to fill up the hole and dig a new one in a new location - rinse and repeat for every time you fell asleep.

I once ran into such an exercise too or better said we drove. Actually it was in a restricted area in the woods but we didn't see no fucking signs. We simply got lost.

Took the wrong turn here and there until we suddenly reached a clearing. We must have been not only lost but deaf too because out of the sudden there were tanks flattening everything coming their way, guys running around in military suits, fully armed...

And yeah, those guys that stopped us made it pretty clear to us to back up as quick as possible. They didn't look very pleased seeing us but thank god they had better things to do, so we got away with no arrest.

They probably wondered how we got there in first hand and that - besides those signs - there were no guards that stopped us. Being probably hyper mad at those... So we got away lucky.

Oh dear, I am not perceptive in the slightest and pee in the woods all the time when I'm hiking because I have a tiny bladder... Next time I'm gonna have to yell "sorry snipers, gotta do what I gotta do" before I pop a squat, you know, for politeness before I pee 5 feet away from their face

There was no purpose, to my knowledge, except for us to stay awake for an insane amount of time while still being able to function and record movements.

We were supposed to "pretend" that the hikers were infantry movement, dirt bikes/cars would be tanks, and so on. If you stay still and have a good suit it's close to impossible for anyone to notice you, except for dogs - that can smell you even if they don't see you.

So if i were to guess it was mainly to familiarise ourself with recon ops, and just learning to accept the boredom and 5 minutes of excitement every 4 hours.

On a real mission the most effective way is staying so far off in to the terrain that it does not attract dog patrols. There are "deodorant"-sticks that are supposed to create a smaller scent-profile - but according to our officer most of that was BS. For us it was mostly "Stay away and don't get detected, if you're detected - set traps and egress". Traps can be irritants for dogs that throw off the scent, or traps such as poisoned treats (It's pretty horrible I know, but that's the way it goes). We weren't full fledged snipers - they receive a lot more training in camouflage than we did, so there might be something they know that I don't.

That's an interesting concept - I've never heard of anything like it, so maybe that could work! One problem that i could see with it is that it might take up a bit of space if you want it to be built to withstand days of rain/snow/sandstorms, which might not make it feasible to carry around compared to smaller, lighter equipment such as scent irritants and similar things.

Descenting products only cover so much. Think of it as deodorant. I'm assuming these guys laid out for hours on end and ghillie suits on top of bdu uniforms doesnt sound like the most breathable outfit

I used to be a WWII reenactor, and we'd occasionally hold events at National Guard training sites. (Not a lot of venues in California are friendly to recreational gunfire, sadly). I'm 99% sure we were used for this exact purpose on at least one occasion...

I binged scary/creepy stories from hikers, campers, people in woods, road trippers via Google for a bit. Other than a scary bear story and a scary mountain lion story, it's the humans that seem to win out.

Although I read a post about hunters becoming the hunted and apparently a dude managed to shoot some kind of cat, maybe a mountain lion, and it apparently followed the man's scent to his base lodge and waited three days till the man came back and got him. That's pretty scary.

The story is about a hunter taking a Siberian tiger's kill. The tiger, following the hunter's scent, stalked him back to his camp site where he watched for around 3 days before finally killing him as revenge.

Probably varies depending on the area but I live in a pretty big city and I rarely see people with guns. Definitely know some gun owners, but they are for home and recreation. Only guy I knew that took his gun in public was former military. Visited relatives in CA and KY, didn't see anyone packing there either. I've heard Texas is full of them, which may be true. But overall guns in America are not as common as memes make them out to be.

I hike with a gun but its concealed because I understand that other people get uncomfortable around them sometimes. Given CCW statistics I would guess that a lot of people own and carry but dont make it obvious, it just makes you a target. And I dont just mean for criminals, there was a story just a couple of days ago on the firearms sub that had a guy harass him and grab for his gun because he was trying to shame the guy for open carrying. I also know there are people who illegally carry handguns because they are either ignorant or just dont care.

Hiking is really one of the main areas I'm concerned with being armed because of the isolation and chance to be bothered by both 2 and 4 legged predators.

I'm from VA and a lot of people are carrying both concealed and open, especially in the southwest region. I worked at a restaurant there and it was not uncommon to see someone come through toting a 9. I even started carrying and I'm not that crazy about guns in the first place. It's like, "The law says I can and I'm not a shithead so I might as well get a license".

You would be surprised. A lot more people conceal carry than you think, and you would never know it running into them. In CA of NJ it’s a pretty safe bet people don’t have them, but other states it’s reasonable to assume at least one person in a given room is armed (in gun free zones, of course). It’s also super common for people to carry while hiking for wild animals.

Is it possible the black mask was a paintball mask? People who play Airsoft sometimes actually get gilly suits, and its possible that is was someone practicing moving in it/trying it out who decided to mess with you.

If this was in washington between in the early to mid 2000s that was me or my buddy in a ghillie suit. Sorry, we thought it was hilarious at the time. I'm lucky i didn't get killed as a teenager I was definitely asking for it.

If this was in washington between in the early to mid 2000s that was me or my buddy in a ghillie suit. Sorry, we thought it was hilarious at the time. I'm lucky i didn't get killed as a teenager I was definitely asking for it.

Everyone keeps talking about you being pranked by a guy in a suit. Lol...watch the movie Creep. You did the right thing. If you can't fight, run. People who act so drastically outside of social norms are certainly dangerous.

Reminds me of a team building exercise I did when I was younger on a corporate grad scheme.

They had set up a whole scenario in the middle of nowhere. We were kitted out in cammo and vaguely military gear (radios etc) and were given tasks by "counter terrorists" (forgot what specific agency they were pretending to be) while avoiding "terrorists". It was pretty fun, the "terrorists" did things like set of a load of fireworks and our 'guide' pretended we were under fire etc, our camp got 'attacked' etc.

Anyway, we were given tasks throughout the night like locating a 'payload' at a specific map coordinate.

We were not good at reading maps.

After hours of looking for a 'payload' we stumbled upon a ring of glow sticks - it looked exactly like the kind of thing these guys would set up. There was a tiny tent in the middle, our "payload"?

The poor guy woke up to a team of military people, with a massive rugby player shouting our code word "MARTINI" at the top of his voice followed by a discussion with HQ on a radio about whether this he was a "payload" before disappearing (we realised he was just some poor camper).

It really sounds like those guys in certain African countries that wear costumes that are tall and look like a pile of straw with a face...they wander and dance around the village at night looking for witches..fuck what are they called?

Actually, i had similar encounter:
I was running on a fairly known trail for skiing in the winter, but in the summer its very much known for alot of runners, as it has alots of ups and downs. Anywho, i was running there when i came out on a long road ahead, instead of alot of rights and lefts. When i saw something dark colored on the road (maybe 20 metres ahead.) I was about too run over there too see what was laying there until it started moving. With just white eyes it looked at me before it stood up on all four and ran into the forest and i never saw it again. I have never runned there after that encounter.